I encourage people who want to know the details of what is going on with Denver's election reform to subscribe to the irv-l list via irvdenver.org . The traffic is about 2 or 3 posts per day.
The message attached below is Rob's reply to a nice post by Mahendra Prasad, included below. (Thanks, Mahendra.) I will respond to Rob's post soon. One bit of help I could use: Is anyone familiar with the article Rob mentions in this paragraph? > Jack Nagel, a UPenn professor, has an important new article out this year > called "Burr's Dilemma" that goes into how this flaw played out in the 1796 > and 1800 presidential election, where the presidential electors (who at that > time had two equally weighted votes), made strategic mistakes with major > consequences in both elections. Nagel used to say approval voting was better, > but now says IRV is better. Did they really use Approval Voting? It sounds more like cumulative voting, or a restricted form of AV where the number of votes was limited to 2 max. Could someone post a summary of the relevant information? Please direct replies to this (my) post to the EM list. Thanks, - Jan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Richie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Jun 11, 2006 10:30 AM Subject: Re: [irv-l] I agree with Jan Kok's Concerns To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm hoping this list will be a practical list about focusing on whether the coming year is the right year for IRV in Denver and if so, focusing on how to achieve that goal. If people want to have questions about the theory of voting methods (something I can talk about all day, but prefer not to when my day has to be filled with things to help achieve reform), I would hope that a separate list could be formed. I will say that there are reasons why approval voting has been dropped by at least one major professional society, why it hasn't been adopted in any US jurisdictions and why it doesn't have any major political advocates while IRV has won support over the years from people like John McCain, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, John Anderson and Dennis Kucinich. Approval voting has two glaring flaws that are far greater than any alleged flaw in IRV: * Voting for ("approving") for a lesser choice counts against your first choice. Voters have great incentives to "bullet vote" vote for one only) and campaigns certainly have great incentives to tell core supporters to bullet vote. The end result is that approval voting will look like a plurality voting election for most sophisticated voters and results may depend on the lack of strategic know-of of the remaining voters. Jack Nagel, a UPenn professor, has an important new article out this year called "Burr's Dilemma" that goes into how this flaw played out in the 1796 and 1800 presidential election, where the presidential electors (who at that time had two equally weighted votes), made strategic mistakes with major consequences in both elections. Nagel used to say approval voting was better, but now says IRV is better. * A candidate can be the first choice of 51% of voters -- someone who would win on the first round in Denver's current system -- and lose if some of those voters err by "approving" of a second choice. You can be sure that those voters in the 51% group would have wished they hadn't "approved" of someone else if this is clear. Even when working on a t heoretical level (something I don't think will happen in any meaningful election where there are high-stakes) approval voting puts a premium on acceptability. IRV balances acceptability with having core support. Its "flaws" are all based on not necessarily electing an acceptable candidate who is unable to attract as much first-choice support as other candidates. I think we want leaders, not just followers- -- and leaders need at least some degree of first-choice support in my book. Rob At 12:49 PM 6/11/2006, you wrote: Voting reform is a real issue and not an academic exercise. Therefore, whatever reforms are made, we want to make sure they are good ones. Whatever changes occur may stick with us for a while. IRV would be a real improvement over plurality voting with runoff. However, it does not guarantee the election of the candidate with the greatest support and that concerns me. First, I want to thank Rob Richie and Kathleen McKenzie for the efforts to improve Denver city council elections. However, I hope that we will consider other voting systems such as proportional representation or approval voting due to problems with IRV detailed in the PS. I know that Rob already supports proportional representation and has provided arguments, so I will not go into detail there. Another voting system I hope we will consider is approval voting. In approval voting, each voter is asked to mark each candidate on their ballot that they are willing to form a consensus around. Whichever candidate is marked by the greatest number of voters is elected. This ensures that the candidate that most voters are willing to form a consensus around ( i.e. the candidate that has the greatest support) wins the election. There are many benefits to this voting system compared to IRV. First, it is much easier to understand. All voters have to do is mark every candidate they like, and whichever candidate is liked by the greatest number of voters wins. Second, it is much cheaper and easier to implement than IRV. In order to practically implement IRV for thousands of voters, it requires computers to perform all the tabulations in quick time. If computers breakdown, it requires much checking to verify final results. With approval voting, even if the computers breakdown, it is much easier to count the ballots and decide the winner. Also, there is no need for significant ballot change because ballots would look similar to existing ballots that voters are familiar with. This will save us taxpayers MONEY. Third, approval voting will guarantee the election of the candidate that is supported by the greatest number of voters. Approval voting is used by various groups such as: The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) with over 32,000 members The Institute of Management Science (TIMS) with over 7,000 members The American Statistical Association (ASA) with over 15,000 members The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with over 377,000 members. UN Security Council to elect the UN Secretary General Mathematical and science organizations use approval voting because they understand the technical problems surrounding the various voting systems and know which works best for them. Though IRV is superior to plurality voting, I am worried that it is complicated, to costly to replace ballots, and can elect candidates who are not supported by the most voters. I want to urge all of us to push for proportional representation or approval voting, because the reform we make maybe stuck with us for a while. Sincerely Mahendra Prasad PS: A Simple of Example of How IRV can elect an alternative that is not supported by the most voters. Suppose the candidates are Adlai, Bob, Casey, and Dwight. There are five voters: Helen, Ian, Janet, Ken, and Leah. Their preferences are as follows. Helen: A, D, C, B Ian: A, D, C, B Janet: B, D, A, C Ken: B, D, A, C Leah: C, D, A, B If we were using IRV, Dwight would be dropped in the first round because it has the least first place votes. In the second round, Casey would be dropped. In the third round, Adlai would beat Bob 3 to 2. But notice that if it had been a one-on-one competition between Dwight and Adlai, then Dwight would have won over Adlai 3 to 2, because Janet, Ken, and Leah all prefer Dwight over Adlai. (Further notice that Dwight would have beat every other candidate in one on one contests). Nevertheless, IRV eliminated Dwight in the first round! _______________________________________________ irv-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.newworldcultures.com/mailman/listinfo/irv-l Rob Richie Executive Director F a i r V o t e The Center for Voting and Democracy 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610 Takoma Park, MD 20912 www.fairvote.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] (301) 270-4616 _______________________________________________ irv-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.newworldcultures.com/mailman/listinfo/irv-l ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info